Monday, July 25, 2016

Ufologists and the Thread of Madness

It’s obvious that there has always been a streak of madness
in society and among humans, even from the very beginning of humankind.

Michel Foucault in Madness: The Invention of an Idea
[HarperPerennial/ModernThought, NY, 1954/1962/1976], Part II, Madness and
Culture deals with shamanistic choices and activity among native American
Indian tribes.

Writing about the Zunis, Pueblos, Kwakiutl, Crows, et al.,
he zeroes in on the Berdaches of the Dakota Indian tribes who gave a religious
status to homosexuals as priests and magicians, making them shamans
accordingly. [Page 101 ff.]

Now is that madness? Yes, it’s a kind of societal madness,
but such “madness” goes back much further than the studies by Durkheim who saw
such odd deviance as a “morbid phenomenon.” [ibid]

It’s blatant, for those who pay attention to news media,
that today’s society is as primitive, maybe more so, than that of early man,
and the madness, while slightly more subtle than what we know from history, is
ripe and ongoing: parents careless with their children, racism, indiscriminate
murders, entertainments replacing altruistic or meaningful activities, and
dozens of other behavioral malfeasances that seem like ignorance but are,
indeed, threads of madness.

Both Freud and Jung, and many contemporary psychologists
have addressed the issue of today’s psychopathology, but that for another time.

My point is that madness is almost an instinct in mankind.
And it permeates the UFO subculture as rampantly as overt society but shows up
in subliminal ways.

In ufology, one need only look at the commentary left at UFO
blogs, web-sites, or the discussions at conferences and other UFO
get-togethers.

The use of non de plumes or avatars by UFO buffs
tells us a lot about readers and commentators in the UFO community.

Take a look at one of my favorite blogs – Kevin Randle’s;
you’ll see intelligent postings by Mr. Randle, subsumed by inane, seeming
ignorant ramblings by his followers, most using avatarial adjuncts. But underneath
the ramblings lie indications of psychopathologies: paranoia, wishful thinking,
outright deviations from facts and truth, et cetera.

Such carefree madness isn’t confined to Kevin’s blog. It is
rampant across the UFO spectrum and not just limited to men, young or old, but
also ingrained in women, i.e., Leslie Gunther, PurrlGurrl, among them.

In the desire to make the 1964 Socorro incident an ET
(extraterrestrial incursion), UFO buffs have created a fantastic panoply of ifs
and buts to make an almost prosaic happening into an alien incursion that is
atypical of other supposed UFO events.

The ET premise came about by the “investigation” of one Ray
Stanford, an ET believer whose bias has afflicted the Zamora episode to its
core, exacerbated by UFO buffs who, to this day, see Police Officer Lonnie
Zamora’s unique observation as confirmation that Earth has been visited by an
alien species in an egg-shaped craft.

The underlying need to insert alien beings into the muck and
mire of human society is as ignorant, er mad, as the idea that gods descended
to Earth in its earliest days and communed with men (and women), leaving no
discernible evidence or help that would alleviate human ills.

Yet, today, UFO buffs, such as Ben Moss, Anthony Mugan, Neal
Foy, and others, see the Socorro incident as resplendent as that of the Old
Testament prophets (and madmen).

Of course, UFO madness isn’t as egregious as that being
displayed by such insane groups as ISIS, nowadays, or those of lone madmen who
shoot innocent people going about their mad pleasures.

But it is madness just the same. And a kind of madness that
is insidious in its own ways, replacing logic and intelligent sense with
cockeyed ruminations that take us nowhere but closer to a human nervous
breakdown, or mental calamity, as Freud warned in Civilization and Its
Discontents and Jung in his Civilization in Transition.

5 Comments:

You come right up to it but stumble into its depression. It's a numbers game. The vast majority of folk are normal and going about their business while the few bad guys are out there. Problem is with the exploding population the percentages are probably about the same.

As a thoughtful blogger with digressions, you present this blog that I read daily, rejecting the avatar people and those of similar madness, presenting a thoughtful topics for consideration.

The separation you provide is the old apples and oranges comparison.

If we venture past our topic and consider ISIS, Hitler, Pol Pot and the like -or go off in the antithesis of God, Bible and etc, here or elsewhere it a a path the irreconcilable madness.

If instead we focus on the the topic and the science there it is a pleasing consideration of the math, distances, percentages and etc., the limits of our science, and human observational issues... Choose that path and we can explore further and/or wait for discovery.

Oh, and every time I read of Jung its like reading the Bible and seeing quotes that apply as those who quote scripture as proof of their position -But I must say I sometimes find it enjoyable anyway, Jung that is, not Bible.

Back to topic Socorro, despite the conflicting evidence, its proximity to White Sands, the Hughes like emblem, and other considerations is still a head scratcher -but far back like Roswell. It would be nice if a technical document came up that said lander test group got a bit off track and just stopped for lunch briefly...

You know I luv ya, but I have to disagree with one comment of yours: "The vast majority of folk are normal ..."

On a scale from totally insane to moral/ethical certitude, "folk" would fall somewhere in the middle I think. And that could be called "normal."

But you know me. I take a harsher more sensationalized position, about almost everything. (I"m not normal myself.)

It's the subtlety of pathology that smacks me in the face, the thread of madness.

I'll be presenting substantiating material about my position upcoming.

As for Socorro, take a look at the comments ongoing at Kevin's blog. They are rife with insane-like observations and obsessional ramblings, almost as bad as those usually coming during a Roswell retread.

Kevin drives me nuts by reopening these old cases, as he has an audience ready to pounce like hyenas going after a slab of meat.

The nuts come out of the UFO woodwork and rehash arguments that have been marmoreal for years now.

You got me there, on the "insane to moral/ethical certitude" scale, surely more of the bell shaped curve. Another aspect is the net gives an easy platform for the greatly uniformed as well as the zealots disproportionately.

I also recall the early days of email descending into a current of forwarded jokes.